February 25, 2011

Mavs exhale after no deals made before deadline

The Mavericks all felt a little sigh of relief when the
trade deadline passed and no deals were made.

“This is what we wanted,’’ Dirk Nowitzki
said. “We feel we’re healthy, minus Caron (Butler). So we’re
looking forward to a strong finish and hopefully a long playoff
push.’’

The next order of business, Nowitzki said, is to tighten up
the defense.

“We’ve shown in the last couple weeks we have
enough weapons and can score on any team,’’ he said. “We
slacked a little on defense, but sometimes when you put the ball in the basket
all the time, you lose your focus on defense gets away and you relax a little.
But we’re at our best when we get stops and push the ball and get easy
shots.’’